By CRAIG D'OOGE
Following is one article in an occasional series highlighting the Library's recently acquired or processed collections.
A chance meeting in 1954 at the Statler Hotel eventually led to the acquisition by the Library of Congress of the personal papers of a one of the most respected journalists of the 20th century.
The man was Eric Sevareid, recently described in the academic review Lingua Franca as a combination of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Indiana Jones, with a press pass. Mr. Sevareid died in July of last year.
Having met Sevareid in New York in the company of the Alfred Knopfs of publishing fame, David Mearns, then chief of the Library's Manuscript Division, returned to Washington and promptly sent off a letter requesting his papers.
The journalist replied, in a jocular tone, that the request made him feel "both pleased and half-dead already." But he readily agreed to donate his papers, "if you think they would be of any use for future Ph.D.s with time on their hands."
The modesty of this assessment is apparent upon first glance at the inventory of the 21,000 items now in the processed portion of his collection in the Manuscript Division. At least as many items are still being cataloged.
The headings of the finding aid to the collection read like a chronology of the modern age:
"Broadcasts and notes from China, Sept. - Oct., 1943," "Dispatches from Italy, 1944," and "Cables to CBS, 1944-1945" are some of the earlier headings.
When World War II began, Sevareid "was in the perfect place at the perfect time," according to John Haynes, historical specialist in the Manuscript Division. His good fortune was further augmented by the fact that he recently had jumped from a job with United Press International to that of radio correspondent for the Columbia Broadcasting System.
Soon he was known as one of "Murrow's Boys," a reference to broadcasting legend Edward R. Murrow, with whom he worked.
Radio gave Sevareid a crucial edge in getting his war dispatches out first, so much so that he was able to cover the fall of Paris almost up to the arrival of German troops. He later traveled to North Africa, England and Asia as a war correspondent.
The papers include a diary Sevareid kept after bailing out of a plane in Burma in 1943. In a tiny scrawl, he records efforts to bury the copilot, who died in the crash:
"Noon -- Col. sends Holland and Signer to help bury co-pilot in parachute sheet," he wrote. "My typewriter melted down," he later noted.
According to Mr. Haynes, the papers are especially interesting because Sevareid was a pioneering broadcast journalist, one of the first who did more than simply read the news on air.
"He was one of the most thoughtful and analytic," Mr. Haynes said. "Many reporters were overwhelmed and confused by the fall of France, for example, but not Sevareid."
Sevareid would record only scripts he had written himself. A large portion of the collection consists of his copies of such scripts as broadcasts from 1939 to 1976. In the early days of radio few recordings were made. From this period, Sevareid's copies are often the only record of what was broadcast. The sheer volume and range of subjects are impressive, especially from 1946 to 1959, when his news analyses were broadcast almost daily.
Occupying as many boxes as the scripts is their inevitable consequence: fan mail. Arranged chronologically, like the scripts, this collection provides valuable insight into public opinion on specific issues.
As Sevareid's career progressed from reporting to commentary, he carried on a wide range of correspondence with many influential people. Members of Congress, Cabinet members and other political figures wrote him to explain their views before he had a chance to comment on them. Their letters survive in the collection, along with his replies.
There are copies of letters from Adlai Stevenson from 1950 to 1956 and a file of correspondence with Svetlana Allilueva, Joseph Stain's daughter.
After the war, the subjects Sevareid addressed during his long career range from the founding of the United Nations in 1946 and Thomas Dewey's campaign train in 1948 to the McCarthy hearings, Vietnam, Watergate and the death of Lyndon B. Johnson. He retired in 1977.
"Sevareid was an anomaly, one of the only men in network history who could get away with quoting Edmund Burke and Robert Lowell on the boob tube," William Madison wrote in his article on the collection in Lingua Franca. "During his broadcast years, many tried to emulate him, but few succeeded in matching his powers of description and his ability to untangle modern history."
His papers, letters and scripts should continue to offer valuable insights to anyone, with or without a Ph.D., interested in "untangling" history for many years to come.